The Princess and the Dragon
by xXSaberXx
Summary: Because peace is overrated and Quistis has never been kissed.
1. Washed Up

Quistis Trepe is out to catch herself a dragon.

She doesn't necessarily want to catch this dragon, but she needs to. There is a distinct difference between need and want, and she's a soldier so she knows that already, but she hates Squall all the same for sending her on a seemingly useless bounty hunt like this when there are kids to be taught and literal mountains of paperwork to plow through. Power through? She doesn't know proper verbs, anymore, because sitting on one bluff everyday looking for a sign of a giant blue lizard is starting to get to her.

Because her tiny office and empty coffee pot family and night alone in the library were starting to get to her.

She chides herself; this is peace. This is honest to Hyne hard-earned peace, she and the others braved a witch (three witches, to be precise), a tidal wave of lunar aliens, space travel, and time compression to get this peace for the world. Empty coffee pots and tiny offices is something she should be grateful for. Not many people were alive to enjoy libraries as thoroughly as she could.

The salt spray bashes against the cliff face, soaking her pink skirt. Two years of peace, and she hadn't changed her usual uniform. Girls were supposed to go shopping during 'peace', weren't they? Quistis wouldn't know. She wasn't a real girl – no doe eyes or quivering lips or cuteness to be had here. Rinoa and Selphie had tried to drag her out shopping in Deling City once or twice, but Quistis hadn't found anything she liked. Quistis didn't even know if she had a preference for clothes – anything comfy would do, and so she'd ended up putting the whole maternity section of the store in her shopping cart and Rinoa threw a fit at the cash register and put it all back. Hyne knows why; everything in that cart had been sinfully comfortable looking.

Quistis stares at the ocean of Centra and wonders when this continent became lonely.

It's the swerving canyons of sandstone and pale sands, the sparse trees and wilted piles of leaves as high as houses. The ruins of a civilization long gone crumbles under her feet, crumbles into the ocean that lashes iron waves against the bluffs.

Matron's orphanage is far south. In the year after the Garden Wars, as the populace began to call it, small towns cropped up on Centra, all eager to fish the waters and scour the ruins for antiques. Ships on Centra's coast were a common sight, now. The new towns gleam like little azure-shelled beetles, blue roofs and massive ports crowded with ships. More towns meant more people, and more people meant more idiots getting hurt by vicious fiends.

Squall had sent her after four very important ones – fiends no SeeD had come back unscathed from.

The first was this blasted Sapphire Dragon.

Whoever thought of the name had to have been drunk, Quistis decides.

She stands and stretches, shaking the salt spray from her hair. Save The Queen shifts on her hip with her movement, ever svelte and ready to draw blood.

This is peace, she thinks, and looks out at the sea.

Third day with no sign of the dragon. She calls it quits and trudges back to the tent she's pitched outside the town of Deep Folly. Squall had practically shoved the gil for an in room at her, but staying in a town consisting solely of drunk sailors left her uncomfortable. They were probably good men, but they were men nonetheless, and Quistis always like to play it safe.

'Play it safe.' Xu's voice rings her head as she strips of her wet clothes and curls into her sleeping bag. 'That just means 'sulk around like a bitch'. I keep telling you, Quistis, you should seriously consider coming with me to one of my friends' parties.'

Xu's parties were for all girls. Which Quistis was fine with, because Xu was her lifelong friend and ally, and whoever Xu loved was her business. But Quistis didn't quite understand the appeal, or the crowd. Xu was convinced Quistis' man-aversion was a sure sign she was a lesbian. Quistis wasn't so sure. She'd considered it, of course, because Quistis was full of logic and logic sat her down and went over with her just how much of a failure her life was romantically, seeking all the reasons and answers. In the end there had been none.

In the end, there was one answer.

She rolls over in her sleeping bag and curses her inability to cast Fire. She hadn't stocked it, opting instead for the high level spells with a nice element neutrality. At the end of the day, though, casting a Flare to warm yourself up meant certain radiation poisoning and, on the lighter side, instant death.

There was one answer that maybe Quistis had been avoiding. Not like she would admit that, though. Quistis Trepe does not avoid things. She faces them head on. While drunk. And held at gunpoint.

The point being, that Quistis Trepe had a fairly broken heart.

It wasn't anything to be sad about, nor was it romantically tragic. She'd simply had a crush for a very long time (more than a crush, more an obsession) on one Squall Lionheart. And when the last witch fell, in the dust of celebration and rebuilding, she watched Squall Lionheart be swept up by a sable, soft, girlish princess forevermore.

Quistis likes Rinoa. She has nothing against the brunette – being a Sorceress was punishment enough. She was cute and happy, and still very wise in her own intuitive way. Quistis, after two years of peace, understands that Squall is in love.

She decided, after realizing it thoroughly, that she was in fact not cut out for love at all. Once was enough, she thinks. Being in love so very tragically and wholly like she had been was enough for anyone. She has her instructor license back, a career to rebuild and a Garden to prepare so that Squall can run it more efficiently. He is the head and she is the inner workings. Nothing has really changed, except that she has more scars now and does not bruise as easily anymore.

* * *

><p>She is buying apples in the market for her food satchel when something rockets into her from behind, making her stagger into the fruit vendor's stall.<p>

"Quisty!"

The thing is bright yellow with impossibly flounced hair and the brightest smile she's ever known.

"Selphie?"

"Irvy! Irvy! She's over here!" Selphie lets go and signals on her tiptoes for someone over the heads of the crowd. "Irvy you drooling jerk-off! I'm over here!"

Irvine, with his long ponytail and wafting duster, looks up from the bust of a woman selling jewelry, his face cracking into a lazy smile as he walks over.

"Sorry Selph, got a little carried away by the...ahem...jewels."

Selphie bristles. "That's it. You're seriously in the dog house this time."

Irvine's face falls. "Aw, Selph, c'mon! You know I didn't mean ta look, it was just there!"

Selphie ignores him and smiles, grabbing Quistis' hands. "Squall told us you were here, so then I had a great idea because, um, hello, when does Quisty ever come out of her nerd-cave –"

"Nerd-cave?" Quistis blinks.

"-so I thought to myself, Selph! This is the like...the most opportune time or whatever. I've been meaning to plan this for months, and with you here on a mission and Irvy and me on holiday and Zell and his girlfriend what's-her-face on break too, plus Rinoa's gotten away from doing all those sorceress publicity things in Esthar, and Squall even has some free time in the next week or so, so I thought –"

Irvine smiles. "Brilliant Selphie here rented us a cabin on the beach for two weeks."

"Aw, am I really brilliant Irvy?"

"You know you are, babe."

Quistis chooses this moment to speak up against the logical fallacy. "Uhm...but just a moment ago, he was in the doghouse –"

"That's right!" Selphie howls. "Don't you try to distract me with compliments, mister."

"Quisty, why you gotta ruin it?" Irvine rolls his eyes.

"I'm sorry, but I'm only here for the mission, Selphie." Quistis sighs gently. "I have four fiends that need to be killed, and then I have to get back in time for the exam prep classes –"

"Where have you been staying in the meantime?"

"Ah, I pitched camp just outside –"

"A tent? No fucking way is my delicate and beautiful Quisty staying in a tent for some fiends to kill her in the night! Oh no, Quisty is staying with us in the cabin!"

Her hand is clutched, and Quistis, much taller and broader and weightier than Selphie, is strong-armed and dragged down the street by a bouncing girl in yellow.

"Zell's bringing the food, and I told Rinoa to get us a cooler of really fancy Esthar booze, so that's always fun, and then I think Squall has the extra futons and stuff, there's only like, four rooms, so that's me and Irvy in one, Rinoa and him in another, Zell and his Girlfriend in the third and you in the last one, Quisty!"

"That's...wonderful." Quistis deadpans. The cobblestone road is eroded by sand, and soon fades altogether into a path of gravelly sand lined by acacia trees and thorny bushes. The beach is beautiful – all pale stretches that meet jade water, the sun glinting off every crest of wave. The few occasional tourists stride along the beach, picking up seashells. Between sand dunes topped with waving grasses are a few beach houses, outfitted with screen doors and slatted windows to let in the summer breeze. The porches are large, and have swinging benches hanging from the roofs. Weathered windchimes and stacks of old driftwood clutter the eaves and ground.

"Here we go!" Selphie fishes out a key and turns it in the lock, banging the screen door open and leading them inside. The smell of salted driftwood and homey cloth assaults Quistis' nostrils. The wood floors have sand in the cracks. Selphie bounces on the only couch positioned around an ancient television. Irvine marvels at the paintings, all dopey lighthouses and watercolor landscapes with no real meaning. Woven throw rugs are scattered in doorways, marking bedrooms and the only bathroom. The shower old, taps rusted and the curtain decorated in clownfish with puckered lips. The toilet looks ready to fall through the floor.

The kitchen is too small. The stairs creak with age. Quistis walks up and finds herself in a single attic space converted to a rough two-person bedroom. The queen bed has a lacy quilt on it. Seaglass and rounded shells collected by someone long gone crowd the windowsills. She runs her fingers over the huge oval window that looks out onto the sea.

"Quisty! I found a bottle of gin someone left , do you –"

Selphie's voice quiets for a split second as she watches the girl at the window. Her grin is broad.

"If you like the attic so much Quisty, you can have it."

Quistis nods. "That would be wonderful."

The tent was cold. This place was not. She could put up with the gang and one bathroom if it meant staring out this lovely window all day.

This is peace, Quistis thinks as she helps Zell unload coolers of drinks – soda pop and water and the purest vodka and wine from Esthar Rinoa could find. She unpacks ham and cheese and bread and noodles and canned tomatoes and racks of herbs all waiting to be whipped into some culinary delight by Rinoa and Irvine's excellent cooking skills. Quistis smiles and inclines her head at Squall as he passes her futon after futon, Zell punching each to ensure optimal 'fluffiness'. The bedrooms have no bed save for the attic, which was why the house came so cheap for rent. No one complains about Quistis getting the only bed – she was alone in it. Having a bed made up for being alone in it, or so the twenty-something logic went.

The chaos breeds a hasty dinner of sandwiches and soda. Quistis takes hers onto the porch, where Zell's girlfriend (forever dubbed 'Bookworm' by Irvine and Selphie) is swinging her legs on the suspended bench.

"Instructor Quistis!" She smiles. "I-I hope you aren't too tired from moving everything."

"Not at all." Quistis takes a dainty bite of sandwich. (She would wolf it down, but she had a reputation to maintain in front of wide eyed students like her.)

"I'm amazed at how strong you are, Instructor."

"Simple weight training."

"Right! I never thought about doing that. I mean, my weapon is a firearm, so I didn't think I"d ever need it, but seeing you haul things around like one of the boys...I think it inspired me!"

Quistis feels her brow furrow. 'One of the boys'. She hadn't thought about her image, rather focusing on helping where it was needed. Had she seemed ungainly? She shakes it off and listens to the squeals of Rinoa and Selphie, of the deep rumbles of Squall's voice and Irbine's warm laugh. Zell comes out, holding two sandwiches.

"Oh hey there Quisty! What's happening?"

"Nothing much."

"Really? That's good." He hands Bookworm a sandwich and takes a walloping bite of his own. "Squall said you have a bounty out here or something. Need help?"

"No. I'll be alright, thank you."

"I know you will! Still, would be kinda cool to fight with you again. Like old times, eh? WE haven't gotten much of a chance, me globetrotting on missions and you...er..."

"You can say it." Quistis laughs. "Stuck in my office working."

"Yeah, that."

Night falls. Quistis stares out the rounded window, watching the sunset gasp its last breath in every color of the rainbow. She's too afraid to go downstairs to even get a glass of water – the doors are thin and she is sure everyone in the house is _busy_, tonight.

This is peace, she thinks. Everyone is happy, paired off, and in varying stages of love. This is peace – filled with laughter and kisses that she never feels. She never wants to feel them. It's alright to not want that.

She focuses on the sea, and smiles, and runs the brush through her golden hair in a hundred strokes like Matron taught her. Scalp to tips and back again.

* * *

><p>The Sapphire Dragon doesn't rear its ugly head.<p>

She watches the water for the fourth day in a row, sitting on the bluff where it was last reported to be seen. She casts an offhand Scan, the information cementing in her brain almost faster than she can understand it. Temperature is normal. Life signs include the usual sea life, a few tourists walking along the beach below, and herself.

There is a faint life sign below her, caught in the teeth of the reef alcove. Something is dying. The way of life, Quistis thinks, and goes back to staring at the sea.

Above the crash of the surf, she hears the groan.

She casts another Scan, quickly this time, and realizes the shape is much bigger than she thought – not a fish, then, but a human. Concern creases her face and salt wind whips at her skin as she runs. The shape is splayed across the alcove, ragged reef below it. She flings a Reflect at the rising waves that crash over the reef, and they stop, bubbled back by the red barrier.

She turns the body over with delicate fingers and hasty hands, eyes taking in the legs first. Two of them. That's good news. Combat boots. That's bad news. A soldier, perhaps? She continues up – no external wounds on his broad chest, his thick arms. She reaches his neck and pauses – a bloody gash extends from his jawbone down into his shirt, where the blood has stained the tight-fitting material.

Curaga. Curaga now. She summons it, the tingle of warmth deep in her veins as the green sparks dance across his chest. The wound does not heal like it should; it bleeds softly on. Her Reflect is weakening. With all her might she maneuvers the man off the reef and drags him across the sands to a dry area, the blood streaking wet behind him.

Panic. He's lost so much blood. His face is pale, jaw sharp, eyes sunken, hair cropped close, a bright blonde muddled by dirt and sweater, with a single strand falling over a red scar across the bridge of his nose –

Quistis' eyes go wide.


	2. Sleep

A/N: Thanks guys. Every review makes me giggle like a little kid. I really do like Rin. There's no bashing in this story, just hot sexy fun stuff and death and not-taking-things-seriously-ever.

* * *

><p>Seifer Almasy knows he's dead.<p>

He can't open his eyes, or if they are open, everything is black. He hears the faint sound of static, or the low murmur of moving water. Hell has a river - the bullshit one with the man ferrying people around.

He has a few memories of how he got here. The creepy Centra ruins had served as his home for the past year. Training. Staying away from Fujin and Rajin as they made out in their love shack by the sea. He'd gotten sick of walking in on them, sick of being the third wheel, sick of every boring day that passed filled with fishing and sun and sand and –

Centra was darker, quieter, and populated by the toughest fiends. The perfect place for a knight drenched in the blood of people he can't remember killing.

This darkness is pretty okay. Darker than Centra, even. Quieter than Centra. He could get used to this. Wouldn't be so bad. Wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be.

And then white – a flash of bright light that grows stronger, and the numbness in his body fades, and his mouth spews water and vomit, and his eyes fly open with a blurry picture of the world. A world. A world of sand and cold morning air (is it really morning? What is morning, again?), and the sound of static proves to be waves, crisp and sharp against the beach and marbled tide pools.

* * *

><p>Quistis Trepe is second to no one.<p>

Well, of course she has betters. Being a teacher was mostly about modesty – not accepting your flaws or limitations was a weakness military instructors knew better than to have. Quistis never refused the idea that some people were better than she. Squall, for instance, had more quiet charisma than she ever would. Selphie was the most personable person on the face of the planet. Even dopey but lovable Zell had his moments; no one in the world, and certainly not Quistis, could ever beat him at eating hot dogs and saying exactly the wrong things at exactly the wrong moments.

Rinoa is far superior to Quistis in casting.

Quistis knows it has to do with the Sorceress gene, granting the girl enormous magical potential. The rest of the world makes do with no magic. The military world makes do with GFs – a bastardized parasitic symbiotic relationship developed only after studying the Sorceress' natural magical ability. The Sorceress is the origin of all magic.

Quistis doesn't feel too bad then when Rinoa is able to heal Seifer's strange bleeding cuts that resisted even her White Wind. Quistis exhausted herself casting layers of Esuna and Regen and everything she could think of, and Rinoa simply falls to her knees in the sand and places her hands on his chest and the wound closes like a child zipping a coat.

"We have to get him inside." Rinoa pants. "I'll get the boys. They'll be able to carry him in!"

"I'll stay with him." Quistis nods. Rinoa stands, Angelo on her heels as she dashes back to the house.

The beach grass sways. The dunes are a dull grey, like the sunlight. Quistis isn't sure if she should sigh or throw the body back in the ocean. Seifer Almasy was always, without fail, more trouble than he was worth. She almost regrets finding him with Scan, and then chides herself for being heartless. There's a sputter, the sound of retching, and a shift of movement.

"Ugh...Instructor? Shit, is this the eternal torture part of hell?"

Quistis holds her breath and looks down. He's talking – chapped lips forming words thin with coughing. She pushes her glasses up on her nose and glowers her best teacher glower.

"You were badly injured, Seifer. Rinoa's gone to get help."

"Tha' fuck are we?"

"Centra. Northwest of Deep Folly. You washed up on the beach."

"Out of all the fucking people in Gaia, it had to be you to find me? Fucking typical." He spits.

"I see you haven't lost your customary vibrant language."

"And I see that ice pole is still up your ass." Seifer winces and sits up slowly. Quistis does not offer him help up. He didn't expect her to. He looks down; his clothes are in tatters. His pants are ripped at the knees, steel colored duster faded and sliced to ribbons on the ends. The red crosses are pink with saltwater wear. His shirt is eaten away from the bottom, ripples of stomach muscle and the healing scar showing through.

"Hyperion?" He asks, green eyes wide.

Quistis shakes her head.

"Ah, shit."

"The ocean could have ripped it from your hands."

"Nah."

He doesn't clarify or define his reasoning. Just a simple 'nah'. It's enough to have Quistis laughing, the chuckle starting deep in her throat and working its way up.

"What's so funny?" Seifer glares. Quistis keeps laughing, and wipes her eyes.

"You show up on a completely random beach all but dead. You die in the time I try to heal you. You somehow hold on long enough between death and life for Rinoa to come and heal you, and after spitting half the ocean up all you can say is 'nah'?"

"Pft, whatever."

"No explanations? No telling me where you were and what you were doing to get beaten and washed up?"

"Nope."

She watches in marvel as he bends his knees experimentally before straightening them and standing. He falters, wobbling, and rights himself in all of a second.

"Well, I better get fucking going. Later, instructor."

"Seifer, wait! You can't go like that! Sit, before you die again!"

"I'm not sticking around here waiting for the whole happy family to gang up on me. Fuck no. Rather eat a barrel of Tonberry shit than see their fucking happy faces all pitying me. I'm gonna head back."

"Head back where? Where have you been staying?"

His voice is angry. "Why do you care? Just fuck off, instructor, seriously. Caring too much'll get you killed."

It's a slap across the face, in a subtle way. He probably doesn't know the impact those words have on her. Caring too much – about Squall, about Irvine and Selphie and all of them, about Cid, Edea, all of her students that died in the Galbadian Garden attack –

"Everyone's been worried, Seifer."

Her voice is low. Despite its volume, it makes him stop on the sandy gravel. His wet shoes pool seawater. The wind passes in the space between them. He squeezes his duster lapels, the water squelching out.

"Save the worry for someone who didn't try to kill you, Instructor."

In his retreating form, Quistis does not see the rebel student who put his feet on the desk and flung gum at the back of Squall's head during lectures. He's twenty. He's not a boy. Or, he was a boy, and then he was made into a knight, and then became the boy again, and is now something between, like a stunted fetus with half developed organs and saltwater for eyes.

The Sleep spell is on her lips and in her veins before she can stop it. Seifer hits the ground face first, gravel crunching into his cheekbones.

"Hyne!" Zell runs up and pokes the body. "You didn't hafta kill him, Quisty!"

"He's asleep, Zell." Squall rubs the space between his brows, hair sticking up in odd directions as if he'd just been woken up himself. Quistis' heart moves a little at the thought of Squall asleep, calm, peaceful. Handsome. She curses in all the languages and dialects of Gaian she knows and looks away from him. Rinoa bounces on her heels and shouts marching orders as Irvine, Squall, and Zell lift Seifer's body on their shoulders.

"Shit, what is this guy made of?" Irvine grunts. "I mean yeah, he was all muscle back then, but what the hell has he been doin' in the last three years, lifting Iron Giants?"

They put Seifer on the couch to discuss options.

"We can't keep him out here." Squall dictates. "But we can't let him go, either. If he's as hurt as Rinoa says he is, he needs to rest. We'll figure what to do with him once he's not near death.."

"Only room with a decent bed is Quisty's." Zell unabashedly rifles through Seifer's pockets, probably hoping to find some blackmail material.

"You don't mind, do you Qusity?" Rinoa tilts her head. "We could set you up down here on the couch, make it nice and comfy."

Quistis flinches. Yes, because sleeping in the living room that's adjacent to all the other young lovers' rooms is something she really wants to do.

"I-I'll be fine." Quistis shakes her head. "There's a cot in the attic bedroom. It's old, but I can sleep there."

"You're not gonna be safe in the same room as that guy!" Zell protests. "Hello? Earth to everyone? He tried to kill us!"

"And Odine scientifically proved, in front of the Grand Esthar Jury, might I add, Sorceress manipulation was to blame. He didn't do any of that out of his own free will." Quistis gently reminds him.

Rinoa smoothes back the single lock of hair over Seifer's forehead. It's a tender movement, one Quistis sees that Squall doesn't entirely appreciate. Rinoa murmurs.

"Just like little shrimp in the sea. Caught in a current, taken places they never wanted to be."

Her singsong tone quiets them all. Selphie barges in just then.

"I got the tourniquet in case we needed to amputate his head!"

* * *

><p>Quistis must have put more feeling into that Sleep spell than she intended. In the space of her mind where the GFs reside, Diablos chuckles to himself, speaking in the arcane tongue that translates directly to her brain.<p>

"_I might've added an extra dose of status magic in there for good measure. Can never be too sure with wayward murderous knights." _

Quistis hugs her knees on the cot, pajamas swishing. She'd learned that talking to Diablos was all but useless. He just talked to hear the sound of his voice.

"_He __looks __rather __different __from __the __misguided __boy __who __killed __many.__Perhaps __he __has __had __a __change __of __heart.__"_ Alexander's voice, a different, warmer baritone, resounds in her head.

"_Shut __it,__you __cobblestone __bird__coop.__"_ Diablos snorts. _"__Humans __never __change. __You __know __that.__" _

Alexander lets the insult slide. _"__Humans __do __not __change, __but __their __hearts __do.__" _

"_Get a load of this guy! Totally on the side of justice and love." _

She shuts her eyes and puts up the mental block that keeps them in a neat corral of dull buzzing. From her place on the cot in the corner, Seifer's prone body looks dead. They'd stripped him of his clothes and boots and put him in a spare change of Irvine's clothes, who was the biggest, but even his shirts were a bit small for Seifer's deep chest.

He's changed.

She's seen Seifer many times before in Dr. Kadowaki's, when she'd been called in to get him. She hadn't cared for the way he bragged every time they walked down the halls together, crowing about his 'victory' over Squall. She only liked the moments before he woke on the gurney bed in the doctor's office – his face peaceful, chest rising and falling. Silence. Wonderful silence.

She'd learned to hate silence now, and to hate seeing her students lying on medical beds.

The boy she'd looked down on in the office many times was skinny – all thin muscle. He hasn't lost that leanness, but instead it's become more defined. Savage. His body tells some of the story of the three years of his absence at Garden – hard knots of muscle, wrapped in layers of scar tissue and tanned skin. The quilt covers his waist, but Quistis is willing to bet the scars are not exclusive to his arms and torso. She recognizes a Mesmerize blade scar, long across his bicep. There's a few others – Ochu tentacle whip marks, Ruby Dragon claw grazes. That last showdown in Lunatic Pandora had not seen him this scarred. These were recent.

Why?

Why so many fiends, so many battles?

Punishment?

Or was he trying to drown the blood of innocents in the blood of fiends instead?

She reaches out, tentatively, because she is frightened of what he has seen and where he has been, and her milky fingers brush at the scar on his forehead. It is the brightest, the boldest. His face has a few small scars, but none as bright as that one. Squall's gift to him, and vice versa. In her quiet moments as a lovestruck girl, Quistis had often imagined touching this same parallel scar on Squall's forehead.

"Don't get too lost in the fantasy, Instructor."

The voice is ragged. She pulls her fingers away like she'd touched molten lava.

"Y-You're up."

"Yeah." He flinches. "No thanks to your ass."

"I did what I h-had to. You needed rest."

He stares up at her, green eyes. Still green. He glowers.

"Since when does Instructor Quistis Trepe stutter? At first I thought 'oh yeah, there she goes stroking my scar like I'm that Commander Ice-Dick she loves or something, nothing's changed, and then she stutters like some kiddy schoolgirl."

"I was...startled. I won't stutter again if it bothers you."

"You can control it? And here I was thinking you were doing it to look cute."

She misses the innuendo entirely, or ignores it, he can't be sure. She draws herself up to her full height. "I am capable of high levels of control in all my motor functions and verbal tics."

Green eyes narrow, chapped lips open to make fun of her. A laugh comes out instead, warmer than the cold, nightbeach air in the attic.

"Don't laugh," Quistis commands. He laughs harder, and sinks back against the pillows.

"I overheard – this's your room, right? What, this big comfy bed all to yourself? Ice-Dick too busy with his wifey downstairs or something?"

Quistis picks up a shell from the windowsill and watches it glitter in the moonlight. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. Seifer does the talking always.

"Hear that?" He asks. She stops and listens. Nothing.

"No."

"Exactly. No yelling. They aint makin' noise. Can't be all that good."

She flushes.

"Eh, Instructor, don't go all 'Mustard Bomb' on my ass like that. You look like a tomato."

"A more dignified tomato than you at least, Mr. Sun-Burnt Beach Debris."

"Shoulda figured. Puberty Boy's still going through puberty. Chicken Wuss is still a chicken. Rinoa's as happy as ever. Irvine's just gotta be some smooth loverboy, and Selphie can't lay off the crack. And Quistis Trepe is still the same old Quistis Trepe – stick up her butt, glasses on her nose, hair in the librarian bun. Is it safe to say you're still a fan of granny panties?"

She sighs and slips under the covers of her cot.

"That Instructor skirt was way too short is all I'm saying," He adds.

"Goodnight, Seifer."

"I'm getting the fuck out of here. I won't be here in the morning, Instructor."

"Yes, you will be."

The Sleep spell hits him just as he chokes off a swear that sounds a lot like 'Hyne's hairy ass'.


	3. The Opal Tiger

Quistis Trepe hasn't given up on the Sapphire Dragon.

She perches on the same cliff she found Seifer, watching the steely water. This place is her only lead, and Quistis relentlessly pursues leads. She is a soldier - a Rank A SeeD. So she sits, and waits, and asks questions of the occasional tourist who wanders by on the pale beach. None of them have seen a scaled behemoth with jaws and wings, and if they assure her that if they did, they'll come screaming to her.

She decides tenacity is overrated, and that she has done all she can do. She wanders into the beachside forests, the trees tall and glittering with emerald and sun. Quistis has never admired nature, but this forest slaps her across the face with respect and ethereal beauty.

Her whip lashes out at grats and coeurls. The forest is thick with them, but she relishes the exercise as Save the Queen relishes the blood. Leather operated best with a little moisture worked in. A clearing opens in the forest, and she spots tell tale signs of a coeurl nest - white fur stuck in branches, the skeletons of many smaller fiends spread around. There's a roar that shakes the forest, and Quistis feels a fear she hasn't felt for many years run through her. That was too loud to be coeurl.

She listens harder - there's squealing of small things amid the roar. A dark Flare bristles in her hand, the black fire weaving through clenched fingers.

The trees hide a coeurl nest, buried in the dirt and stuffed with straw and the fur of old prey. Dead parents and dead cubs scatter on the ground. Blood. In front of the nest is a much bigger fiend, nearly as tall as one of the ancient trees itself. It swipes at the cubs in the nest, roaring. The fur is pure white, striped with dramatic black. A tail, ears, amber tiger eyes that spot Quistis and immediately lock on to her. Powerful muscles turn it to face her, and Quistis stares down the Opal Tiger - the third fiend on her checklist.

This is death, she thinks, and throws her spell.

A Flare to the face makes it lunge. The ground shakes as it lands with enormous paws, and Quistis rolls beneath it. From here she has the perfect angle to wrap the teeth of Save the Queen around its ankle. She rips back, severing its Achilles tendon. The beast screams, and swipes for her. She strafes backwards and pulls on a hind heel, and that tendon cuts raggedly.

The beast has two feet, now. Quistis is behind it, summoning another Flare in her palm. The wave of magic through her veins fills her with heat and tingling rushes of blood. The Flare explodes, the smell of singed fur wafting. The Opal Tiger thrashes, the tail colliding with Quistis' side. She goes flying like a rag doll, skidding across the dirt and leaving a trench. Her back tears with gravel and hard mud and pain.

The tiger rounds on her, and pounces across the clearing in one fell jump. She is beneath it, now, and its hot, rancid blood-breath hits her cheeks as it takes a moment to gloat. In those amber eyes she sees death, and a life well lived on both their parts - hers saving the world and the tiger's ruling the forest.

In that moment, Quistis summons Alexander. The GF materializes in a flash of white light, looming out of the forest with brick and mortar and the cannons in his shoulders. The tiger fears not. It leans in to rip her head from her shoulders, and freezes when it feels the thousands bolts of light pierce its ribcage. The tiger is thrown to the ground, the earth shaking wildly. Quistis gets up and brushes herself off as the beast struggles to breathe, to move.

She raises her hand and gathers a Blizzaga, aims at the throat. Shoots. Ice blades end it.

The amber eyes dim. Quistis checks the underside of it for the tattooed number - 47. It's there in faded ink. She mentally checks the Opal Tiger off the list. She checks the coeurl nest. A single living cub squeaks among the bodies of its sisters and brothers.

Quistis gathers it in her arms.

* * *

><p>When she walks into the cottage, Rinoa's eyes widen. She dashes over from where she was stirring sauce.<p>

"What is that little thing?"

"Coeurl," Quistis murmurs, slipping off her boots. "One of the fiends I was hunting destroyed its nest."

"Oh!" Rinoa's eyes water as she picks the shaky cub up. It squeaks, tawny fur trembling under the sorceress' touch. "Don't worry little guy, you're safe now. Do you want some milk?"

Irvine raises an eyebrow, pink apron donned as he chops onions. "Are we seriously keeping it, Rin?"

"It has nowhere to go! It'll die without food!" She protests. "We'll talk it over with the others when they get back, okay?"

"Where _are _the others?" Quistis looks around. The house is eerily quiet and empty save for the two cooks.

"Selphie dragged everyone to the beach. You should go meet them."

"No, thank you. I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap."

Rinoa nods. "Oh, if you're going upstairs -" Her delicate hands shove a tray with a bowl of broth and some crackers on it.

"For Seifer."

Quistis minces up the stairs, Rinoa's cooing at the coeurl fading. She has a hard time balancing the tray. The attic is quiet, too, which Quistis thinks very odd.

"Finally!" Seifer grunts from the bed. She eyes the manacles and chains that hold his feet and hands to the wall and floor. Apparently, he'd tried to get out.

"Is that food?" He asks eagerly. Quistis put the tray on his side table and turns to get a clean pair of clothes out of her bag.

"Oi, Instructor! Don't leave me hanging."

Quistis turns and eyes him disdainfully. "I'm sorry?"

"I can't eat like this!" He jerks his head to the manacles. He inhales. "Oh Hyne, that smells fucking great."

"I'm not going to feed you if that's what you're implying." She pulls out a fresh pair of underwear and hides it away in her arms so he won't see it.

"So you're gonna leave me to starve?"

"I'm sure Rinoa will be more than happy to come up and feed you. I'll alert her on my way up after my shower. A very long, very hot shower."

He groans. "Don't be a fucking tease, Instructor."

"I would never tease a starving man about food -"

"Wasn't talking about the food."

It takes a moment for it to sink in for Quistis. He means the shower. She rolls her eyes.

"You're an idiot, Seifer."

"S'why I never passed your class, right? Look, just one spoonful? Or pass me the crackers and put 'em on my chest or something. I can eat that way."

She sighs. "I'll feed you on one condition."

Seifer straightens, more eager than ever. She doesn't admit she likes it when he pays this much attention - she shakes it off as her Instructor motivations.

"No more perverted comments."

"Only if you feed me until I break out of these handcuffs."

"No. Rinoa will -"

"Slop it all over my chest and coo at me like I'm fucking four years old. They've shackled me up and shit, and Rinoa shoots me all kinds of pathetic pity looks. There's only so much hynedamn humiliation I can take, Instructor."

Quistis mulls it over. It's not a fair trade, but nothing about their interactions have ever been fair anyway. Her scoldings. His rebellious laughs.

"Fine. If I hear one perverted comment from you -"

"You won't." He shakes his head. She sighs.

"I'll see you in a few minutes, then."

"But -! My food -!"

"You'll survive."

The door shuts, and she drags the hot shower out as long as is humanly possible.

And she sits on the edge of his bed, her hair still dripping wet, and she spoons the broth into his mouth reluctantly, and he takes it for all it's worth. She's careful - Hyne knows why she puts effort into pressing the spoon against his sculpted lips - careful not to brush her fingers anywhere she shouldn't, to have her thigh meet anything it shouldn't under the blankets. She's not afraid of him, but she's afraid of the way he's all man - muscles and strong wrists and protruding veins near his neck. It's her SeeD training, she knows. She thinks of the hundred ways he could render her defenseless.

If there is one thing Quistis hates, it's being defenseless.

The manacles make her feel a little better.

"You're real quiet, Instructor. Where's the insults?" Seifer asks between a bite of cracker.

"I see no point in talking. We have nothing to discuss."

"Huh. Well, now that I know that, I'm definitely not gonna tell you how I ended up on that beach."

Damn him. Damn him and damn her own curiosity.

"A fiend?" She guesses. He snorts.

"Don't hurt my pride like that, Instructor. No fiend in this world could fuck me up as bad that."

"A GF?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Closer."

What was 'closer' to a GF? She stares at the floor and sifts through her mental encyclopedia of fiends and all aggressive things on Gaia. She can feel Seifer staring, not doubt inwardly gloating over her bewilderment. A cloud opens up, and rains start pounding on the tin roof of the cottage. It's loud. She can faintly hear the shrieks of Selphie and the shouts of Zell come closer. The screen door bangs open, then closed. The house comes alive with talk and movement again. It breaks her concentration, but not Seifer's.

"Ginger," He grunts. Quistis sniffs.

"What?"

"Ginger soap. I can smell it on you. It's nice."

She falters, goes cold on the inside with panic. She manages words.

"I consider that a perverted comment, I'll have you know."

Seifer's smile dims. "Right. Pretend I didn't say it, then."

"Quisty!" The voice resounds, and the attic door slams open. Quistis stands immediately, and puts the spoon in the bowl.

Selphie holds the coeurl in her arms. "Give him a name!"

"Are we keeping him?"

"Squall said we could! I promised to take him out to poop and pee! Oh, should we name him that? 'Poopee'? That's easy to remember, right?"

Selphie's eyes slide over to see Seifer. She points.

"Ew, it's a bed bug."

"Fuck off, crack addict." Seifer spits back. Quistis smothers a smile. Selphie sees it and claps her hands.

"That's it then! Poopee! Welcome to the family, little guy!"

The coeurl leaps from her arms, no longer quite as timid. It sniffs at the bed, and leaps onto the sheets, curling up at Seifer's side and falling asleep nearly instantly.

"Poopee has bad taste in people." Selphie wrinkles her nose. Seifer flips her off, face a little red. Selphie fakes tears, hugging Quistis around the waist and wailing about her hurt feelings. Quistis pats her head patiently, and leads Selphie downstairs. Squall is sunburnt, his face the same color as his scar. Irvine has Zell in a headlock, pink apron flapping as they struggle with each other. Bookworm and Rinoa sit at the kitchen table, working on a puzzle.

Selphie holds the cub over her head and screams. "Quistis named him Poopee!"

The room goes still, then starts up again.

"Poopee? Seriously, Quisty?" Irvine asks, Zell squirming under his arm.

"That's so gross, though!" Rinoa protests.

"It makes him unique, Rin!" Selphie pouts.

Squall nods. "It'll do for now. Good work, Quistis."

Quistis smiles and tries not to meet his eyes. She is over it, she chants to herself. Over it. Over it. Over getting happy about praise from Squall. So over it. This is just a lower rank SeeD feeling pride from the praise of a higher ranked one.

She is a new girl - a girl with no possibility of ever falling in love again. That reminder her leaves her feeling a little freer. Relationships are trouble, kissing, she's sure, is trouble. She has given much thought to it, and sex itself is trouble. She has a hard time imagining it, but she's sure there are a million chances in which to mess up during it. Make it more trouble than it's worth.

She's lost in her thoughts as they discuss Seifer. When Squall asks her a question, she comes down to Earth, alarmed and flushing.

"Y-Yes. I think it is imperative we…uhm…keep him chained up."

"My thoughts exactly." He nods. "He won't stay in a bed and rest for anyone. It's either chains or we drug him."

"I'm really mad we have to be so mean." Rinoa starts. "But that wound wasn't a normal fiend wound. There was some kind of venom in it that kept it from closing. I couldn't draw it out. It's going through his system. I'd say two days? Two days and he should be over the worst of it, and we can let him go."

"Two days of being called Chicken-Wuss," Zell sniffs. "Irvine, you have really bad B.O, man! Lemme go!"

"Not until you apologize," Irvine singsongs. The others get up from the table as Rinoa announces that the spaghetti should be done.

"What did he do?" Quistis asks.

"He said I should shoot Seifer through the head when I have the chance."

"He's just, you know, dangerous! It was just a joke, Irvine!"

"Even if you don't like, bro, Seifer's one of us orphanage kids. Ain't no way I'm ever hurting him again if I can help it."

"If you won't, Irvine, I might be forced to do it for you." Quistis smiles.

"D'aw, Quisty. Alright, do it if you gotta. Just don't leave any scars." Irvine winks. Quistis nods, murmuring more to herself than anyone else.

"He has enough scars already."


	4. Time

A/N: Thank you, lovelies. Can I have a mini fangirl moment and say omg to sissyHIYAH. I've been in love with your Renfair Seifer/Quistis fic for a long time.

* * *

><p>Quistis Trepe is not a fan of razors in any regard.<p>

The bathroom is cluttered with toothbrushes in a cup - Zell's a bright red, Bookworm's purple, Irvine's green, Selphie's striped and Squall's a dark blue. Rinoa's is pink with tiny wings on it (what was with her and the wing motif, anyway?). Irvine and Squall both have razors sitting on the enamel, Zell is freakishly bald in his facial hair area and doesn't require one.

Selphie and Rinoa's razors are in the rusted, already-coated-with-soap-mildew tub. A puddle of sand from the beach sits in the bottom. Quistis brushes her teeth and glares at the girl razors.

She understands armpits. Yes - those need to be shaved quite often. Not for vanity purposes, but rather so the hair doesn't itch and distract her or make her smell and give away her position to sensitive fiends. Leg hair? She understands why girls shave it (smooth legs, sexual attraction, etc), but she's never liked to do it herself. It was always more of a peer pressure thing - Rinoa commenting that Quistis' legs were hairy, Selphie laughing. Quistis insisted it was because she'd been busy in the office, but the fact of the matter was she hated to cut her legs up. She wasn't good at shaving. The blood and the knicks and the bandaids and scabs. She got enough injuries fighting fiends and being a SeeD - getting more shaving was illogical.

But they are at the beach, so Quistis does her best to shave every so often.

What she really doesn't understand is shaving in more sensitive areas.

Rinoa and Selphie rave about it. They even talk about….'shapes', as though that place were a topiary garden to be sculpted and perfected. It gives Quistis hives to even think about taking a bladed object near that area. She upkeeps it, of course, when it gets too…wild, but the level Selphie and Rinoa are at is far above her.

Is it these moments Quistis realizes she knows more about Rinoa and Selphie's (and therefore Squall's and Irvine's) sex life than she needs to. But it's the most frequent topic of conversation besides clothes and all she does is listen, so it's not so bad.

In some ways, Quistis feels inferior to Selphie and Rinoa for not having sex. She feels inferior to most of her students and all of the adults in the world, since they have been kissed and she has not. But she's no longer concerned with love, so she hasn't felt inferior for a while. She's never going to be kissed, or have sex, or maybe she will but that will be a far off thing and she's alright with it, being 'that' girl, the career woman who, at forty, cleans the house every Saturday, eats precious little other than microwave meals, and rents banal romantic comedies because every other movie reminds her of how life is too serious. She'll most likely pick men from bars or the gym and sleep with them for the tension release, and they'll leave in the morning and she'll go to work and it will be fine. If she's lucky she'll find someone who's clean and kind and deigns to have sex with her on a weekly basis, that way she won't have to go bar diving.

This is, of course, assuming she likes sex at all.

She could hate it. She could be one of those ones with the blinding pain, or the fast partner, or be left hanging when she's close to the edge. It could just be boring. How would she even initiate the conversation? Would it just come naturally or would she have to make the first move? Wouldn't it all be embarrassing? She is quite sure she would burn up from shame. Which moves were the right ones? Which moves would make her look experienced to hide the fact she was not?

She sighs. This thinking about boys business is far too much work and energy.

* * *

><p>Poopee has taken to streaking about the house in various states of distress if he hasn't seen Seifer for more than a half hour. Quistis wishes this could be said for her and her housemates as well. Alas, a kitten's love is both short and indiscriminate in that it doesn't care if the object of affection yells obscenities at it and threatens to skin it alive if it licks him one more time.<p>

"Don't you fucking touch me with that paw. I ain't your scratching post!"

Poopee mewls, jumps on his chest, and presents Seifer his butt.

"Get your ass out of my face! Ugh, it stinks!"

Quistis rifles through her bag and pulls out her bathing suit - a dark purple one piece. She wonders if it's too plain. Seifer holds Poopee at arms length.

"Oi, Instructor, don't tell me. That's your swimsuit from swimming class back in seventh year, right?"

"Of course not."

"It definitely is. Look, there's that white stripe on the bottom and the Balamb logo. Hyne, Instructor, you really like to crush my hopes for something skimpy."

"Do you want to eat tonight?" She sniffs.

"It was just a joke. You can't threaten cripples like that!"

She watches him block Poopee from trying to crawl back on his chest with madly waving arms.

"You are far from crippled."

"Crippled inside, instructor. You know, _crippled inside_ and all that deep shit."

She takes her glasses off and grabs her sunscreen. "Would the afflicted area be your brain, by any chance?"

Seifer lets out a chortle ending with a snarl. "I said get your ass out of my face, dunce nut!"

Poopee mewls proudly. Quistis starts out the door.

"Instructor, wait!"

She sighs and walks backward a few steps to look at him. "What is it?"

"Bathroom."

She changes in the bathroom before he mucks it up. She watches him walk down the hall ahead of her, a Sleep spell brewing in her veins just in case. He walks straighter, stronger. The wounds on his back peek through the sleep-ruffled, hiked-up shirt. They're all but healed. She waits outside the door.

"Get off on hearing guys pee, do you Instructor?"

She doesn't dignify him with a response. The shower turns on, and she bristles.

"Don't you dare, Seifer. I have a beach to be at with the others."

"Come in here and stop me then."

She won't. She won't and she knows it and he knows it. She fumes and clutches her beach bundle with white fingers. Minutes drag. Selphie tears out of the door in a tiny bikini, shirtless Irvine and Zell on her heels. Bookworm in her tankini nods courteously to Quistis in farewell. Frilly two-piece Rinoa pounds on the door.

"Don't take too long, Seifer, or we'll make you pay the water bill."

"Kiss my ass, princess!"

The insult rolls off her. Rinoa smiles at Quistis and dashes out the door. Shirtless Squall nods to her.

"Keep an eye on him."

"Y-Yes."

The house is quiet. The heat in her face subsides. Her swimsuit had looked so plain compared to the others'. When the water stops she has half a mind to wrench the door open and blast Seifer with the Sleep spell. Or Petrify. Whichever made him lifeless faster.

"Huh. Lemme guess," He pauses. "The plain white toothbrush is yours, right?"

The way he says plain tugs at something in her. "If you so much as touch my toothbrush -"

The sound of the sink, and him brushing. She can take the taunts, the insults, but this invasion of mouth privacy is unacceptable.

"You can say it." She snaps.

"Sway whut?" Mouth full of toothpaste.

"I'm boring."

"Whut dah hrell rr yew rahling abut?

"The swimsuit. The toothbrush. I'm boring."

A pause. He spits. "You're sensible, Instructor. Err, what's the word Fuu would say…"

Fujin had a word for her?

"UTILITARIAN." Seifer bellows. Quistis jumps. "That's the one."

The door opens. Steam billows out. He is shirtless - much different from blocky Zell, barely-defined Irvine, and lean Squall. She wishes she could say the thick cords of muscle entranced her. If she was a normal girl, maybe they would've. But it's the scars that have her staring.

There are hundreds. Pearly patches of skin. Fang marks. He had put himself through a shredder.

She wonders why.

* * *

><p>He drapes his shirt across his arm and adjusts his pants. Feels like a person again, with the hot water waking his skin and the sparking mint in his mouth. He opens the door.<p>

She looks fine. She looks like Quistis. Not the Quistis of Balamb Garden, but the Quistis of Centra Orphanage. Golden hair long, limbs milk white and strong, swimsuit fitting her like a second skin. She's never been Rinoa or Selphie skinny, not even in the orphanage - always taller and broader in the shoulders and hips. Normal girls had complexes about not being skinny girls. Quistis in general is a seething mass of complexes carefully hidden by a maternal façade. Irvine's words, not his. Like hell he'd come up with gay shit like that.

But he agrees with it.

Her blue eyes widen. "Your wound looks better."

He looks down. The skin is pink. Another scar. Like he cares. "Yeah? Princess did a good job healing it."

Back in bed. She clips the manacles on again. Golden hair curtain brushes his face, the skin of his stomach. He bites back a groan. Groaning would freak her out. Freak him out. Make it awkward between them. She's the last person he wants to be awkward with. Poopee settles on the end of the bed. She looks like she wants to say something.

"Spit it out, Instructor."

"Three years of no contact. We presumed you were dead."

"S'how I wanted it to be."

She glares. Without the glasses her eyes are brighter, more colorful. He can see the lashes.

"Go have fun, or whatever. Tell 'em they're faggots for me, will you?"

It's obvious to him, the way she shifts in her swimsuit and holds the towel around her. She's uncomfortable in so little clothing. She's uncomfortable about her body. In the warrior sense her physical confidence is infallible. In the woman sense, she's defunct.

He almost laughs. It's stupid. Quistis Trepe - golden marble girl, fox-eyed and sharp as the whip she specialized in. Everything a girl should want to be stands there, looking angry and unsure of the fact she's pretty. Very pretty. Like one of those fucking princesses in a play. Looking like she's scared to go down to the beach in that swimswuit - as a woman. To face her friends. To face the fact she's different from them. To face Ice-Dick.

"Pubes doesn't like you, Instructor. Never will. So don't worry so much."

Her glare fades. "I do not like him."

"You do. But it's going away. Time, and all that bullshit, right?"

"Three years," She insists.

"You didn't miss me."

"No."

"Good." He grins. "Get out of here. I'm gonna try to whack off."

She rolls her eyes. "You never fail to be delicate."

"Why would I wanna be delicate when you already do it so well, Instructor?"

Her blue eyes rake over his chest, and he feels a swell of pride in his lungs as her eyes hitch on his lines and definitions. It takes him a second to realize she's studying the scars.

"You followed your dream, Seifer," She murmurs. "That's more than most people can say."

She leaves. He stares at the ceiling.

Hynedamn her. Hynedamn her insight and piercing blue eyes and long legs and her words that echo in his head and make him want to be seven again, five again, to be held again, to be locked away somewhere warm where nothing can get to him again.

Maybe.

Maybe it'll get better.

Time, and all that bullshit.

* * *

><p>Quistis sits under the umbrella and watches the sea sparkle. Selphie makes a snowman of sand, drawing the words 'ugly' and 'seifer' in it. Zell makes a sand chicken right next to it and writes 'chicken wuss'. Even Squall's mouth quirks up with amusement. Rinoa can't stop laughing, strap of her swimsuit falling, and Irvine chortles until he chokes on his beer.<p>

Quistis pushes Rinoa's strap up her shoulder and smiles. She tries not to think about work, but it never fails to creep into her mind. Which patch of sea was the Sapphire Dragon hiding in? Where, for that matter, were the other two on her list - the Ruby Condor and Onyx Tortoise? She had to find them, too. She'd stock some Fire element resistance, tonight, and rearrange Diablos' effect on her weapon to include poisoning -

Irvine calls her name, and she turns her head to be greeted with an offering of spiked lemonade.

"Just for a bit, Quisty." The sniper smiles. "Just think about having fun for a bit."

She sips her lemonade - sour, sweet, bitter. The snowman's large head and slightly roman nose bear a striking resemblance. Zell kicks the snowman in the stomach, and he and Selphie step back and agree the footprint makes it better.

Irvine starts crafting a house for the snowman out of driftwood. He quietly chips away with his knife. Selphie plants the shavings in the snowman's head, like hair. Only when the snowman is finished and in his home do the others begin to think about swimming - Rinoa splashing Squall, him flicking his hair as if annoyed (he isn't, he really isn't), Irvine throwing Selphie in the water. Bookworm stays with Quistis, both of them similar in the regard their pale skin would burn in an instant in that sun.

The snowman watches the water.

Quistis thinks it touching, that 'Seifer' is here with them. Even with him trapped in a bed and hated by the rest of the world and by himself, the orphanage gang still remembers. Still cares.

Still forgives.

Time, and all that bullshit.


	5. Messed Up

Seifer Almassy is going to die.

It's not going to be because of a fiend, or a rival SeeD, or even a sorceress. Death by any of those things would be ass-leagues kinder than the way he's going to die this very second.

Quistis Trepe is eating vanilla yogurt.

This isn't bad per say - a summer rainstorm swept over the beach, leaving muggy gray skies that kept everyone weighed down in humidity and brain-boiling heat. It's all the residents of cabin 12 can do to stay cool; Selphie spread on the couch dramatically with two fans focused on her, Rinoa dabbing ice on her back and standing in the open refrigerator, Squall and Irvine on the porch drinking beer while a shirtless Zell and blushing Bookworm giggle about winding each other with cheap paper fans.

Seifer is stuck in the hot attic, round window letting in bare wisps of seabreeze, while his blonde ex-teacher sits on her bed, flipping through a book and spooning white cream past pink lips. She is making the attic a million degrees hotter, and he can't even say anything.

All he can do is strain against his cuffs and stare and try not to die of the inevitable combined sensations of the summer and the radial heatwave that courses through him everytime that tiny pink tongue licks at a missed spot of cream.

He is tired, itching for exercise, bored, sore, and so hard he could probably cut glass. Not a fantastic combination.

"Th'fuck are you reading?" he grunts. If he was five years younger, he wouldn't have the willpower or focus to even manage words in his state, but thankfully he's old and less sensitive. Quistis looks over her glasses sternly at him.

"General Hypotheses on the Secular Mindset of Esthar. Fascinating, really. The professor who wrote it -"

"Is a boring conehead who probably doesn't see the light of day and can't tell his ass from his mouth. Seriously, instructor, read a trashy romance book for once."

"Why would I do that?"

"To let everyone know you haven't been replaced by a soulless robot who looks like you, maybe?"

"I've never read a romance book in my life, Seifer."

"Obviously." he snorts, but a tiny voice in his head is secretly relieved she hasn't - sensitive pansy ass over-muscled brooding heroes would be a hard ideal to live up to.

She spoons more yogurt into her mouth. For a second the images in his head slip through at full force - that the spoon is him, grazing her chin, clasped in her long white fingers.

No. He sternly cuts himself off. This is Trepe he's thinking about. Trepe - with her massive hard on for Squall and her control freak nature. He knows she hasn't had any men - Rinoa and Selphie love to tease her about it and the walls are thin and he has nothing else to do but strain to hear in on other peoples conversations creepily. Trepe wouldn't have any idea how to solve his downstairs problem. She would probably fumble, or blush, or make some stupid clinical analysis of his approximate length or something and he has got to stop thinking about it and her together at the same time.

He's just trapped is all.

He doesn't actually like her. She's a fantastic piece of tail and he's been training alone on Centra for years. It's only natural. Seifer hates love, or whatever people call it these days. Hates the couples downstairs, hates the idea of them held together by more than just sex, hates all of it.

He hates it because he's never had it, mostly.

"I'm going hunting tonight." Her voice cuts through. He shrugs.

"So what?"

"Tonight's the night Squall and the others agreed to unchain you."

"Awesome."

"Come with me." She insists.

Yes please. Yes yes yes yes please come with me. His hips give a twitch, but she's too absorbed in her book to notice.

"What're you hunting?" He manages.

"Onyx Tortoise. A hardy nocturnal creature. I asked around town today - there have been sighting in the volcanic rock field to the north."

"Do it yourself."

"The Onyx Tortoise is highly resistant to magic. My whip will not be enough."

"Just yammer a lecture at it for a bit. Insta kill."

His mouth works out of habit, autopiloting the bickering that defined what little stood for friendship between them. At her defeated sigh he kicks himself, wishes he said something eloquent or coldly indifferent like Squall would. She stretches, cracking her milky smooth neck. How she'd gone twenty-one years without getting kissed is beyond him. Well, not really. She's a prude. But goddamn if life wasn't unfair, giving that picturesque body to a frigid brainiac.

"I'll ask Squall then. Perhaps he will lend me his blade tonight."

Tonight. Blade. Seifer hears the words but thinks something completely different. His mind is flooded (goddamn vivid imagination) with images of Squall 'lending' Quistis his 'blade'.

"I'll go with you." he snaps.

"What? But you just said -"

"I'll go with you." He repeats, voice harsh, acidic. Her blue eyes widen, and a small grin forms on her lips.

"Very well."

And then, in her half-delighted state, her spoonful of yogurt misses her mouth and splatters on her chest, clinging to the cleavage there and her shirt is too low cut and his hips do that twitchy thing again as he stares at the sight and imagines everything but innocent yogurt and Quistis is completely oblivious, _thatbitch_, and uses her fingers to wipe it up and licks it off her fingertips and he is going insane, insane, he needs to get these handcuffs off right now -

And then she looks up, right at him. Her finger pauses between her lips, cheeks hollowed out. He's holding his breath and she seems to remember he's in the room, and she glances at the yogurt cup and back up at him, and blushes the deepest red he's ever seen, and darts out of the room, and before he can catch his breath he realizes he's soft again and the inside of his pants are sticky.

He growls a swear and bangs his head against the bed and wishes, just once, that he didn't have a dick that made him look like some uncontrolled, excitable preteen in front of his ex-instructor. If he was Squall, that wouldn't of happened. Squall, the pussy of her dreams, would've kept a straight face, a cool face and wouldn't of lost it in his pants like he did just because she ate a bit of dairy.

She doesn't come back to the room. Zell walks up and with a roll of his eyes unlocks Seifer's handcuffs.

"Quisty said shell meet you in town. Corner of First and Smith."

"Never thought I'd say thanks to you, chicken wuss. So what, are you deep fried or baked these days? Wait, lemme guess. Bookworm's _whipped _the chicken." Seifer pops his neck, his shoulders, relishes the chance to move and be human again.

"I'm mature now, Almassy." Zell sniffs. "I won't argue with you."

"I bet she rides you till you start crying. That'd be just your position, chicken wuss." He knows he's right by the way Zell's eyes bug out and he cracks his knuckles.

"You piece of shit!"

Seifer ducks a blow, sliding back in his leg and letting his blood sing on his ears. Chicken wuss aims an elbow jab at Seifer's nose, but he ducks again and laughs, all the energy he had in bed exploding after being let free. Seifer puts the younger boy in a headlock.

"I'm just glad you got a girl, wuss. Was starting to think you were a fruit."

"Speak for yourself!" Zell grits out. "You don't even have a girl."

Seifer throws him back, and reaches for his faded trenchcoat and gloves. With them on he feels like the old Seifer, the soldier Seifer, the white wolf to squall's black lion. Zell scoffs.

"It'd have to be a huge masochistic idiot if you ever got a steady girl."

"Steady is a waste of time." Seifer grunts.

"Why's that?" Zell sneers. Seifer looks back at him.

"Nobody lives long enough to be steady."

Zell is quieted by this. Seifer's boots clonk down the steps two at a time.

He should have stolen a kiss.

He knows now why she's never been kissed - no one in that stupid Garden had the balls to ask her out. All she had were the creepy Trepie stalkers and her blinding obsession with Commander Ice Dick. She'd been alone, hadn't she? Even surrounded by admiring colleagues and students, she had been all alone in that carefully crafted shell of perfection, keeping everyone, even hapless boys, out. He'd never seen it before. He'd been dating Rinoa, and by the time they broke up he was Ultimecia's puppet, far away from Garden. The only man in Garden - in the world - with the balls to walk up and kiss Trepe without fear or a duty-bound sense of decorum had left. He left.

He gets it in his head that he was supposed to be her first kiss. Not because he likes her, or cares about her or anything mushy like that, but because he's the only one who could have done it, but he didn't.

He's a big egomaniac, but it really is his fault. He feels guilty. He feels guilty when he sees her standing on the street corner, the lights of the town shop diffusing gold over her quiet, composed, elegant face. A face that, even when smiling, always looks a little sad.

He can tell she still remembers the yogurt incident, her face falling into a lifeless mask when she spots him walking towards her. Trying so hard to look unaffected. Squall's practice blade sits on his hip, and even if it's Ice Dick's he still feels a surge of confidence with a gunblade in reach. He's in his element, now. No more chains.

"'Sup instructor?" He tries casually.

"Are you prepared?" she sniffs.

He wants so bad to snipe back; "Are you?" and lean in and take that kiss he was meant to so many years ago, but his time has come and gone. It's too late for them. He's not the same. She's not the same. He missed his chance, didn't he?

That pissed look on her face says it all; he's nothing but an annoyance to her. She is a war hero. He is a war criminal. The good guys and bad guys don't do the love thing.

He shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm always ready, Instructor."

They walk to the town outskirts together, the barren black rock and sand of the cold lava field stretching on. The moonlight is red, tonight, and it reminds him too much of the Lunar Cry. Too much of the time he led Rinoa to her death, shoving her in front of Adel like an outgrown doll.

Quistis fought him, in Lunatic Pandora. The dark well Ultimecia kept him controlled with, the deepest, most evil part of him that craved to hurt others, had always taunted him about the girls of the party, how to break them. Kill Squall and make Rinoa truly cry. Cut Selphie's big mouth till she bleeds when she talks. Fuck Trepe till she screams, take her crystalline-pure pride and ruin it over and over.

He remembers the spell, even if it has no hold over him anymore.

He sidesteps a behemoth and lunges for its tendons. One slice, two slice. The beast is on its knees. Quistis shouts for him to stand back, and he shifts back as a blackfire Flare explodes on the beast's head. It's dead before it hits the ground.

The first thing Seifer did when Ultimecia's spell lifted was puke.

The second thing he did was pass out.

The third was wake up and puke until he dried up and Fujin forced water in him with a tube thing.

He feels something hard hit his temple and drop to the ground. Quistis snorts.

"Hi-Potion. Use it."

"Gimme a break, Trepe, that shithead didn't even touch me."

"You're pale. Whether you want to admit it or not, your body isn't completely cured of the poison. Drink."

He feels woozy. He'll never tell her that. He chugs and watches her over the bottle as she searches the lava field, pale skin and hair glowing in the moonlight. She's fucking incredible. Downs a behemoth with one spell, orders him, the stubborn king who takes orders from no one, and then goes back to looking for her target in the span of a minute. He's jealous. He's jealous of her composure, the one thing people lamented he never had. The thing people seemed to think would make him a better person.

He spits on the ground. Fuck them.

"Why're you after this turtle?"

She squints. "A Trabian laboratory had four prototype genetically spliced fiends escape from the compound. Opal Tiger. Onyx Tortoise. Ruby Condor. Sapphire Dragon. Highly dangerous. Highly aggressive. They have to be put down before they hurt someone, or disrupt the natural ecosystem."

He snorts. "Only place they belong is where they got created, huh? Sucks."

"Sounds like you feel sorry for them, Almassy."

"I feel sorry for everybody who's gotta die. Dumbasses should know better than to go around dying."

Her eyes are on him. He balances his blade on his shoulder carelessly, one hip cocked out. This position used to drive the girls wild. He does it without thinking. It only makes Trepe frown harder.

Seifer coughs and sheaths the blade. "Maybe in the next life they won't be so dumb."

She's quiet. He thinks he's said something cool when she chuckles.

"What's so funny?"

"Even in the next life, Seifer, you'll be just as dumb."

"Aah, shove it." He's not in the mood to argue. Her pretty giggling throws him off being mean, anyway. She keeps at it, laughing softly even as she takes off over the lava field.

Just like that, he wants to tell her everything.

I killed people.

I hunted people.

I started a war.

I wanted to hurt you guys.

I wanted to kill Squall. (still do, just not seriously, who would I spar with then?)

I wanted to make Rinoa suffer.

I wanted to shatter Zell and Cowboy and Selphie.

I wanted to ruin you. She made it sound like ruining you would be fun.

I wanted to die.

The last part is pathetic. it's all pathetic. He's not haunted by it like he should be. It's a memory, fading and dim. He should be suffering for what he did.

Maybe he is.

"Plans?" Her voice cuts through. She stands on a vein of cold lava, watching the horizon for any sign of the tortoise.

"You know me, Trepe. Ain't got none. Maybe head back to Centra Ruins and train. Maybe find a village and settle down as a headhunter. Dunno. I go where the work is good and the women easy."

"Sounds nice."

He nearly chokes. " You're into girls, Trepe? Might wanna let your fanclub know -"

"I meant," She snaps, face coloring. "The freedom. It sounds...nice. Going where you want. Traveling. Packing up and moving at a moment's notice."

She's full of surprises tonight.

"Last time I checked, rule book thumpers like you don't like change. You'd hate it."

Her smile is wistful. "I won't know until I try."

He loses it. She making him fly off the handle again, spiral dangerously out of control. She blinks, and he's looming over her, close bit not quite touching. She can hear his breathing and see the strained cord in his neck. She should move away, step back, make space between them. She should. She can't. She can't move. She can barely breathe. He's so close - too close. The serious look in his green eyes holds no smirk, no sideways insult.

He gets even closer, chest radiating heat that permeates into her. Infects. Sweat. She can smell sweat and steel.

"Seifer -"

He glowers. "I'm not good at this shit, Trepe."

"What shit?"

He doesn't say anything. Just looks at her. Grazes against her with parts of him - bicep, hip. He's shaking. Quistis quashes the roiling in her stomach - he's nervous. Seifer. Nervous. It makes her want to laugh, if not for the serious look in his eyes.

"Seifer, you're unsettling me."

His heart leaps. Yes. Good. Unsettle her. Unsettle the ice queen. She's showing a new expression - not anger or weariness with him. Just a bit. A bit. A little more -

She slaps away his hand starting to cup around her backside, eyes brimstone.

"I'm not one of your port whores, Almassy. Don't touch me like I am one."

She cements it as she turns her back and retreats back to the glowing halo that is town. That's it, then. He breaks the fragile tie that had spun between them these past few days with one almost-touch. He can't form the right words to tell her - he'd never think of her as a 'port whore'. Never. But he only knows how to do two things - grope girls and swear. It's not his fault she says things that make him want to kiss her some prude place like the top of her head. It's not his fault she's way out of his league.

He finds a nice barmaid, and because he's handsome and devilish she melts into him, and because she's soft and sweet he melts into her, and when he comes back to the cabin to get his stuff smelling like cheap perfume and sex Rinoa shoots him that look. That look she would shoot him when he'd look at some other broad's ass while with her. That prissy 'you're doing something sleazy look'. The rest of the gang is at the beach. Quistis has locked herself in the attic. He steals a pack of jerky and a ten credit bill from the counter. Poopee, the little coeurl, squeaks and stumbles after him, all the way down the gravel driveway. He grunts a 'no' and taps the scraggly thing with his shoe in a 'go home' motion.

It's better this way.

He'll stop at the bar in town and ask about the next boat away from this hellhole. Three days. He'll ask about a sword - a gunblade of white steel and leather. A drunk fisherman raises his head, blearily recounts about seeing a massive fish of some kind, with scales, a handle of something sticking out of its mouth. Maybe a fiend. He jerks his finger to a WANTED poster on the hunt board by the ale racks, a picture of a blue serpent longer than a boat and with vicious, wolf-like jaws.

Sapphire Dragon.

Quistis hears the pebbles on her window before she sees them. She pushes open the oval and looks down on the driveway. Blonde, frowning Seifer.

"You can hate me, Instructor. But you gotta help me."

"I'm not in the mood for you, Seifer." She sniffs.

He swallows a wince. "Just shut up and help me this once, okay? And then I'll get out of your hair."

"That's a promise?"

"Sure. Whatever."

She mulls it over, watches him. His stance is still uneven, he favors his right leg where the largest slash in his thigh had been. He limps, but tries so hard to hide it. Quistis is cold, but not heartless.

"What do you need?"

Green eyes shadow. "Tell me where I can find that Sapphire Dragon."

"I can't. I haven't been able to locate it."

"I'll help you track it."

"Why would you do that?"

"Bastard swallowed my sword."

Selphie will run up from the beach then, give a 'hello' kick to Seifer's shins, and wave at Quisty. Irvine will pound Seifer's back in a manly greeting, Rinoa will choke him from behind by hanging around his neck. Seifer's every wince is obvious.

"You can stay here if you like, Seifer. You don't have to leave right away." Rinoa smiles.

"I'd rather camp on a pile of Cerberus' shit." He snarls. "I'm just here to get my sword back."

"Where is it?" Selphie tilts her head. "Lost up your bum?"

Seifer narrows his eyes. Quistis' voice rings above them.

"One of the fiends I'm hunting swallowed it, apparently."

"That settles it then!" Rinoa claps her hands. "You can have the extra cot in Quistis' room. That'll help when you two are planning strategy."

Irvine coughs a 'strategy' and laughs. Rinoa ignores him and looks up at the attic window. "That's alright isn't it, Quisty?"

Seifer sees his former instructor shift uneasily. He clears his throat.

"I saw someone's tent in the backyard. I can just use that. Like I'd want to spend my nights under the same roof as you guys. I might catch your moron disease."

"Still in kindergarten, Seifer?" Squall deadpans. Zell smirks.

From the shabby tent he can see the lights of the house as they wink off, one by one.

He's just here for the sword.

The attic window has no curtains. Quistis reads a book in bed, glasses perched on her nose. Probably a fucking textbook.

Here for the sword.

Just the sword.


	6. Beginning

**Author Note May 11th: **

Hey guys. After three years of hardass work and six failed books, I finally got an offer of rep from a literary agency, and legally can't post here anymore. If you want to talk or whatevs, PM me. I'll put my twitter in my profile if you wanna hit me up there. I'm sorry I can't finish this. Writing these fanfics was always a nice break. Fanfiction is always in my heart.

I started writing fanfiction when I was twelve, got agent rep at 21. You never know where life's gonna take you.

There's something comforting about never knowing.

Stay sexy.


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